SPORTING SKETCHES. 241 



timber-limit exploration in the Laurentian hills. I was to 

 accompany them with gun and rod to help in supplying the com- 

 missariatwith game. There was no resisting this invitation. Now 

 listen to the result of the first day's fishing. Of the party there 

 were four American prospectors, one of the proprietors of the 

 mills, myself, with four voyageurs, ten men in all. 



Arrangements were made for a start about sunset, and near-by 

 the camping ground selected on the river side there was known 

 to be a cool spring entering the river, where on a bank of golden 

 sand the trout were sure to be sporting in the cool waters of the 

 river. 



The approach from the bank was through a bed of reeds, the 

 water was as clear as crystal and the trout were there, but how 

 to get near them without being seen was the question. They 

 had to be stalked as carefully as deer on the open ground. 



Having rigged a gang of six small hooks on a gut, I crept or 

 slid through the weeds followed by two men, who were to bait 

 the hooks with worms (excuse me, we were fishing for supper) 

 and handle the fish, and the slaughter began. 



Cast one over the sand-bar swarming with half pound trout 

 and six trout were thrown overhead to the men behind me. 

 Cast two, three, four, five, six, and so on, with a result of six 

 trout at each cast in an interval of about two to four minutes for 

 hooking the fish, taking them off the hooks and rebaiting. The 

 next thing was to shoot some millard grouse (sa van ne partridge) 

 which I did, until one of the voyageurs proved to me that he 

 could noose them with a slip-knot of cedar bark at the end of a 

 pole. 



This satisfied me that pot hunting was not sport as is gener- 

 ally understood by anglers and fowlers, but we all did justice to 

 the supper. 



My fish story only begins here. Some ten or fifteen years 

 afterwards our old host of Hunterstown Mills, who was good at 

 a story and could out-slick Sam Slick or Mark Twain, stopped 

 me as I passed along St. James street, having just then left Sir 

 Fenwick Williams and his aides on the opposite side, to whom 

 he had been telling a trout story, when with the remark to the 

 general, " Why, there's the very man who did it, but wait one 

 minute until I ask him as to the number, for by jove I have told 

 the story so often that I really believe I have got ahead of the 

 count." 



